Jerry’s 6 Most Serious Girlfriends During ‘Seinfeld’
With apologies to Shoshanna Lonstein.
Over Seinfeld’s nine seasons, its principal characters slammed an absolutely astonishing amount of ass. Especially in the later seasons, it seemed like Jerry and George had a new preposterously good looking girlfriend of whom they would tire once some small personality quirk or physical flaw consumed the relationship. Jerry’s unofficial body count over the entire course of Seinfeld sits at 73 total women either bedded or dated — just two away from winning a free STD screening from his local Planned Parenthood.
Categorically, these relationships were short-lived — the Seinfeld writers didn’t care much for overarching relationship plotlines like other sitcoms did, as demonstrated by the unceremonious way they killed off the only person dumb enough to try and marry one of the core four characters. In all the Seinfeld canon, only a scant few women managed to make any sort of impact on Jerry’s life. Here they are in ascending order of their relationship’s seriousness…
Meryl
No woman ever managed to marry Jerry during the run of Seinfeld, but Courteney Cox did get him to at least pretend to do it. What starts out as an innocent fib to get Meryl free dry cleaning descends into a seven-hour itch as Jerry and Meryl’s charade as husband and wife puts excessive strain on their real-life bond, leading them to part with the immortal words, “We’ll always have pancakes.”
Dolores
Dolores (not Mulva) is the first girlfriend featured on this list to have dated Jerry for more than one episode — not that she made all that big of an impression doing it. When she first dated Jerry in “The Junior Mint,” Jerry couldn’t even remember her name, only knowing that it rhymed with some part of the female anatomy. Eventually, she realizes that Jerry doesn’t know if she’s Bovary, Loleola, Celeste, Hest or Gipple, so, as she’s breaking up with him, she finally informs Jerry that she pronounces the word “clitoris” really weird.
Vanessa
Despite being tied for the title of Jerry’s longest tenured girlfriend through all nine Seinfeld seasons, Vanessa never earned so much as a last name from the series. Jerry and Vanessa’s relationship lasted four entire episodes in the show’s first season (though actress Lynn Clark only actually appeared in two of them) before Jerry brought his beau on a bed and breakfast weekend in Vermont, only to spend the entire trip worrying about a stock purchase he made, thus dooming the relationship with the bad vacation.
Rachel Goldstein
Rachel holds the record for appearing on-screen as Jerry’s girlfriend in the most episodes of Seinfeld, and, by Hashem, she made them count. Rachel found herself in the middle of multiple disputes during her dynastic reign, starting when Newman caught her and Jerry necking in the middle of Schindler’s List, upsetting her traditional Jewish parents with the news. Rachel was also responsible for ruining George’s chances with Jane and her Boutros Boutros-Ghalis when she walks in on George changing and fails to recognize the significance of shrinkage.
Jeannie Steinman
Of all the 73 hapless heroines of Jerry’s love life, Jeannie Steinman, played by Janeane Garofalo, came the closest to putting a ring on New York’s most annoyingly eligible bachelor. After saving Jerry from getting flattened by a speeding car, Jeannie ingratiates herself to Jerry with the coincidence that the two share initials. Quickly, Jerry learns that he also shares nearly every personality trait with Jeannie and proposes to her in the Season Seven finale — only for the two to break it off in the following season’s premiere.
Elaine Benes
Who else could possibly snag the top spot besides Elaine? We don’t know for sure how long her and Jerry’s original relationship lasted before the events of the show, but we do know that their connection was strong enough to survive the dreaded “Let’s just be friends” stage for nearly a decade — with a little sugar on the side thrown in around Season Two.
